BAD COMPANY

Sub-titled ""The Bandits, Stage Robbers, Outlaws and Stick- up Men of California's Famous Gold Rush Days"" -- this is excellent sifting of source material true from false- but not as lively reading as, for instance, Hungerford's Wells Fargo (P. 315) or Beebe and Clegg's U.S. West (P. 386). Jackson traces the legends that have grown up around Joaquin Murieta, Dick Fellows, Tom Bell, Rattlesnake Dick, Black Bart, and lesser desperadoes, on to the last of the Mexican bandits and the '70's and '80's which saw the end of organized stage coach robberies. Plenty of material here, even shorn of some of its surplus romance.